I have successfully upgraded my SGI 320 to a dual 1000Mhz. I've created
this page to share my excitement in getting this setup working and in hopes of
extending the shelf-life of the 320. They are unique machines in there own
way. Please read all of the "What you need" section
before you email me questions. Thanks.

NEWS:This site is no longer being updated. I've since retired my SGI 320.

Here is proof that I have a Dual 1000Mhz SGI 320!
(running Windows 2000 Professional) - (another user send me an image
of their desktop). I'm running a dual boot, so I also
have Windows NT 4.0 running off this machine.My
older SGI 320 went bad (power supply/motherboard) so I inherited another SGI 320
(a bit newer). On my old 320 I tried getting a dual 800 Mhz setup running on
its 007 rev B motherboard but had no luck. I only tested a dual 500Mhz and
a single 800Mhz CPU configuration. The jumper settings for the CPU speed do
not matter for PIII CPUs; I have the PIII 600Mhz jumper settings for my
dual 1000Mhz setup. The jumper settings were for the old PII CPUs. I
found out that any jumper settings works for dual 1000mhz.

Where do you get a PIII-1000Mhz 100FSB Slot 1 CPU?
You want to get the retail box with part #: BX80526H1000256. There are really hard to find. Intel does not sell them anymore. Try looking on ebay. Make sure they are the same stepping
value! I have found that if you usually buy two processors together, they
are most likely the same stepping value. These PIII CPUs only have 256K
cache.

Disclaimer: I recently got this dual 1000Mhz
configuration up and running. So far it's been very stable, no crashes or
lockups. Just be aware no extensive tests have been made. Update - it's been several months and I have had no problems.

Between the cpu upgrade, more memory, and faster
hard drive you can really notice the difference in performance. I upgraded the
sound card because it contains a MIDI port and has hardware accelerated sound in
DirectX on Win2K.

Some Benchmarks (how much faster?)

Below are some benchmarks. I used SPECviewperf 6.1.1 (not 6.1.2) just
because I had done some early benchmarks tests with it and 6.1.2 is
different. I wanted to compare the numbers, before and after. Below
are some benchmarks for CPUmark99 (compare
other results) - CPUmark99 only tests one CPU, so these numbers are for one
CPU.

There's a 75% increase in performance from 500Mhz to 800Mhz and a 109% increase
from 500Mhz to 1000Mhz. The dual 1000Mhz completes one unit of SETI
(version 3.03) in about 11 hours. Compare that figure with your
system.

As you can see, in some tests you really do get a performance boost in upgrading to a
1000Mhz (maybe due to the geometry setup), for instance Light-03 set is more CPU
intensive that other tests so you get the largest increase. In some tests it
really doesn't make a difference (the bottle neck is more on the Cobalt graphics
chipset), ProCDRS-02 set which is pushing high polygon counts.

When you look at the numbers, the SGI 320 still fairs pretty well vs. current
nVidia cards for higher end 3D graphics work. I have yet to do some
benchmarks on 3D renderings in 3D Studio Max. Early indications show some
great performance increases in rendering times, due to the dual 1Ghz number
crunching power.

This
file was downloaded a while back from the number9 website which is no longer
up. So I'm providing this file for all those users that have the SGI
1600SW flat panel monitor. It runs fine on Windows XP Pro. DOWNLOAD
.INF HERE.

Wireless
PCI card working on SGI320 (12-30-2001):
According to a SGI 320 user on the comp.sys.sgi.hardware newsgroup, the DLink
(part number DWL-520) wireless PCI card works. He has tried different USB
solutions and has failed. The card is working on Windows 2000.